Florida’s prepaid college tuition plan is generating enough revenue to provide refunds to parents in part because of strong earnings on the plan’s investments and low tuition statewide.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said this week part of those savings is how the state has held down tuition and other costs at the state’s colleges and universities. The plan factors in future tuition costs and when those costs don’t reach predictions, families can receive a refund.
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The University of Tennessee – Knoxville’s Campus Advisory Board has voted to increase tuition by 2 percent for for in-state students and 4 percent for out-of-state students, the school announced.
“A combination of enrollment growth and state support has allowed us to keep tuition flat for five of the last six years. The costs for delivering high-quality academic programs, however, have continued to rise in that time,” said Interim Senior Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration Allen Bolton. “We have worked hard to keep tuition increases as small as possible while still ensuring we can give students the Volunteer experience they expect.”
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There’s going to be a building boom on some University of Wisconsin campuses across the state.
Gov. Tony Evers on Wednesday signed a new law that clears the way for a new engineering building at UW-Madison, as well as classroom renovations in both Madison and Whitewater. The new law also includes nearly $200 million for central plant renovations and demolition projects.
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The Goldwater Institute (GI) sued the U.S. Department of Education last week over fining Grand Canyon University (GCU) almost $40 million.
The fine was purportedly for “insufficiently inform[ing] PhD students that they may have to take continuing courses while completing their doctoral dissertations,” GI said in a press release. GI noted that the $37 million fine against the Christian university “is 10 times bigger than penalties the Education Department assessed against Penn State and Michigan State for covering up the sexual crimes of Jerry Sandusky and Larry Nassar.”
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The state House agreed Tuesday to boost support of Pennsylvania’s four state-related universities in exchange for a tuition freeze in the 2024-25 academic year.
Penn State University, the University of Pittsburgh, Temple University, and Lincoln University will receive $640 million more from the state after months of legislative wrangling.
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Ohio State Representative Adam Mathews (R-Lebanon) renewed calls for the Ohio Senate to pass his Higher Education Return on Investment Act this week.
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Public universities across the United States are spending money to increase their workforce and then passing the bill along to students, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.
Since 2002, the average flagship university’s spending rose 38%, with a majority of the money being spent on salaries and benefits, which rose by 40% in the same time period, according to an analysis by the WSJ. However, the average tuition cost per student rose 64% to cover the costs of salaries and benefits in the same time period.
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The University of Arizona proposed a 3% increase in tuition for all incoming resident undergraduate students, effective in the 2023-24 academic year. Out-of-state incoming students will experience a 4% increase in tuition.
Current students will not be affected by the change, thanks to the Guaranteed Tuition Program, which started in 2014. The program ensures that all undergrad degree-seeking students will pay the same tuition and fees throughout their time at the university.
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The University of Wisconsin is moving toward its first tuition increase in a decade.
UW President Jay Rothman told lawmakers on Thursday that he will ask regents to raise tuition by 5%, starting next fall.
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Temple University (TU) cut health care benefits and tuition remission for graduate students currently on strike, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Graduate students began their strike for higher wages, improved health care, extended leave and better working conditions on Jan. 31. TU informed students via emails, which were shared on Twitter by affected students, that the university would no longer pay part of or all tuition costs and strikers would lose health care benefits because of their participation in the strike.
“We believe that this is retaliation for going on strike and we are pursuing a challenge to it,” Bethany Kosmicki, past Temple University Graduate Student Association (TUGSA) president,
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Vanderbilt University recently announced that all future first-year doctoral students will receive a $2,000 stipend in order for the graduate school experience to be “supported” and “enhanced” while also placing entering students on “more firm financial footing.”
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Critics are taking Biden’s student loan forgiveness initiative to task because they believe it will only raise tuition in the future.
The Education Data Initiative reports that as of January 2022, in-state tuition and fees for a public 4-year university in Michigan climbed 3.31% in the last year. The cost for out-of-state tuition and fees climbed 2.76% during the same timeframe. The cost for room and board jumped a combined 10.59% in the last year.
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With the Biden administration’s announcement this week that it would continue the moratorium on student loan payments through the beginning of next year and will forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt per student, student loan forgiveness is at the top of the current political agenda. Meanwhile, there’s little talk about bringing the cost of college under control, or why the cost of college became so outrageous in the first place.
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Pennsylvania’s four state-related universities are moving ahead with tuition increases in spite of Republican lawmakers’ exhortations that they freeze their prices.
Earlier this week, state Senator Doug Mastriano (R-Gettysburg) sent a letter to the administrators of Temple University, Lincoln University, the University of Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania State University to urge them not to further economically burden students or their families as inflation rages. Soon thereafter, GOP leaders of the state House of Representatives sent their own message to the four schools which operate independently but rely heavily on state funding.
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State Sen. Doug Mastriano (R-Gettysburg) this week wrote to Pennsylvania’s four state-related universities to urge them to abandon their planned tuition increases and freeze in-state tuition in light of skyrocketing inflation.
The senator noted that the Keystone State’s Fiscal Year 2022-23 budget allots $600 million in total to Lincoln University, Temple University, the University of Pittsburgh and the Pennsylvania State University. Those institutions are also getting $40 million in new discretionary funding from Gov. Tom Wolf (D). With such generous state subsidies, Mastriano reasoned, partially public universities should make every effort to avoid putting new pressures on students and their families.
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As consumer prices and inflation soar, a public university in Virginia has decided to raise the cost of tuition before the next academic year.
“The Virginia Commonwealth University Board of Visitors voted Friday to set tuition and fees for the 2022-23 academic year. Tuition will increase by 3%, the first tuition increase for undergraduate students since the 2018-19 academic year,” Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) said in a Friday statement. “The increase is necessary to cover VCU’s share of anticipated salary increases for faculty, staff and adjuncts; to increase student support; and to address the higher costs of maintenance and utilities.”
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Arizona’s governing body for the state’s three public universities has given the go-ahead to make an education more expensive.
The Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) voted to approve tuition and fee hikes at Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University and the University of Arizona. Tuition increases will range from 2% to 3.5%.
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The three public universities in Arizona — Arizona State University, University of Arizona, and Northern Arizona University — are demanding tuition increases. They are proposing increases of 2% to 5.6%. A committee of the Board of Regents will vote on the hikes on April 7.
The universities cite inflation as the reason for the increase, with NAU President José Luis Cruz Rivera asserting the increase “accounts for less than half of current inflationary costs.”
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College costs and student debt remain high, and the Senate Appropriations Committee’s hearing with the leaders of Pennsylvania’s state-related universities was about how the General Assembly can help schools, rather than why its leaders aren’t doing more.
While leaders of Penn State, Temple, Pitt, and Lincoln universities noted more funding from the Legislature would cover more costs, they noted an emphasis on graduating students faster to lower student debt.
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An Ivy League law school will start paying tuition for low-income students beginning next fall to diversify its culture and make law degrees more affordable, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Yale Law School will cover the tuition for students with income below the federal poverty line by offering scholarships of roughly $72,000, the Wall Street Journal reported. The scholarship will cover tuition, fees and health insurance while students are responsible for their estimated $21,000 living expenses.
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On Tuesday, Herschend Enterprises, the nation’s largest privately-owned themed attractions corporation, announced it will cover 100% of tuition, fees, and books for any of its 11,000 employees who choose to pursue further education.
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San Diego State University is now accepting donations in the form of Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
An anonymous donor has sent the school approximately $25,000 worth of Bitcoin, according to the SDSU NewsCenter.
“The SDSU auxiliary will keep almost all of the contribution in the form of Bitcoin instead of immediately converting it all to cash as many other universities have done,” the outlet reported.
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Thales Academy, a college preparatory network of Pre-K-12 independent schools, announced Friday that it is offering a significant tuition reduction for its new campus in Franklin, Tennessee.
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Mike Rowe took a swipe at the rising cost of college tuition during an interview Tuesday with Fox News, asking, “what are we paying for?”
Calling what students are paying to attend college courses “somewhere between egregious and obscene,” the host of “Dirty Jobs” said that he predicts “one of the silver linings” from the coronavirus pandemic will be Americans’ commitments “truly to learning” and that the crisis could “completely redefine” how people learn moving forward.
Rowe told viewers that just the week before, he watched an online lecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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by Chrissy Clark Brown University plans to offer “tuition-free” master’s degree programs to beneficiaries of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals if the federal government ends the Obama administration protections. DACA, an executive action implemented by then-President Barack Obama, authorized renewable two-year deferrals of deportation along with eligibility for work permits for illegal immigrants brought to this country as children. President Donald Trump sought to phase out the program and asked Congress to decide by law what to do about the roughly 800,000 DACA recipients and others like them. “Should DACA be eliminated, we will create in-school and postgraduate opportunities for students unable to work legally to engage in stipend-supported research and education that is not citizenship-dependent,” Richard Locke, Brown University’s provost, said in a statement published on Today@Brown. The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more >> In the same post, Locke announced that the private Ivy League university in Providence, Rhode Island, will offer tuition-free, fifth-year master’s programs for eligible 2018 graduates. “Admitted students would receive a stipend and health insurance,” he said. Brown also offers to cover the $495 DACA renewal fee, “if renewal is an option,” as…
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